Ordinary Unhappiness

93: On Emma Jung feat. Ann Conrad Lammers

Patrick & Abby Episode 93

Abby and Patrick welcome Ann Conrad Lammers, a Jungian psychotherapist and the primary editor and assistant translator of Dedicated to the Soul: The Writings and Drawings of Emma Jung, a brand-new volume from Princeton University Press. Going against the grain of traditional narratives that present Emma as a helpmeet to her more famous husband, this collection brings together for the first time many of Emma Jung’s works across a variety of media and genres, highlighting her outsize contributions, both material and intellectual, to the tradition known as Analytical Psychology. The wide-ranging conversation explores Emma’s biography, her ambitions, and her intellectual preoccupations. The three also dig into the story of how Emma managed the complications, at once personal and professional, of simultaneously being the wife of Carl Jung, a foundational player in several analytic institutions, a deeply respected correspondent of Sigmund Freud, and a clinician in her own right. What emerges is a tale of betrayals and boundary violations, but also of growth, resilience, and the confrontation of lifelong tasks, with implications not just for how we understand the often-neglected stories of many women clinicians in the early decades of psychoanalysis, but the stakes of confronting patriarchy while embracing the work of therapy in the present.

Selected texts: 

Ann Conrad Lammers, Thomas Fischer, and Medea Hoch, editors. Dedicated to the Soul: The Writings and Drawings of Emma Jung, Princeton University Press, 2025.

Ann Conrad Lammers. ‘Emma Jung’s Years of Self-Liberation.’ Essay available at:  https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/emma-jungs-years-of-self-liberation

Ferne Jensen and Sidney Mullen, editors. C.G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff: A Collection of Remembrances. The Analytical Psychology Club of San Francisco, 1982

Emma Jung and Marie-Louise Von Franz. The Grail Legend. Princeton University Press, 1998.

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